Monday, April 28, 2014

Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court poured another tanker truck
of gasoline on the already disastrous conflagration known as Citizens
United.In McCutcheon v. the FEC, the
5-4 decision once again affirms the earlier decision that money is speech, but this
pronouncement goes a bit further by providing for any wealthy individual to
influence unlimited numbers of political characters rather than follow earlier
law (1974) limiting the number of candidates to whom one could give money as
well as capping the amount given to each.

In other words, to Mitt Romney’s famous, “Corporations are
people too, my friend,”he could add
“and wealthy individuals can be unshackled lobbyists, my friend.”

According to On the Media, the McCutcheon decision raises
the limits able to be spent by an individual for individual donations from
$123,000 to $3.6 million – ornearly 30
times the amount limited by earlier campaign finance laws of 1974.

Shaun McCutcheon is a conservative businessman from the
state of Alabama who enjoys giving money to his favorite political candidates
and committees.His suit, supported by
the Republican National Committee, argued that his right to free speech was unfairly
and illegally constrained by the FEC’s Federal Election Campaign Act of 1974 –
the result of concerns raised initially during the Watergate scandal and a
Congressional attempt to halt the possible corruptive influence of money in
politics.

The Roberts Court and the usual suspect judges merged around
the previous Citizens United argument that money is speech and speech must
remain free and without constriction.

Stock Tip:Citizens United has proven a huge monetary boon
to the corporate media in 2012.According to Take Part,“Nearly
$6 billion was spent during the record-breaking 2012 election cycle…” Indeed,
nearly $1 billion of that money was from donations made privately by anonymous contributors.

Reporter Meredith McGehee from Commonblog notes that CBS
Chief Executive Officer Les Moonves reported CBS profits will climb $180
million this year due to political advertising.“’Super PACS may be bad for America,’ Moonves said, ‘but they’re very
good for CBS.’”

As we roll into 2014, the McCutcheon decision will likewise
boost eaernings; moreover, the amounts of cash headed to major affiliates in
2016 may become absolutely mind-boggling.CBS may be trading a bit down this week and last, but just wait until
late summer and early fall.

If there is an answer to this judicial scandal and our
national dilemma, some method to at least shed some light on all this dark
money, the solution may exist in the very words of the decision makers on the
Supreme Court and the most unlikely and least exertive commission in
Washington.

Within the 30 page majority opinion paper by Justice Kennedy
in the Citizens United case is the sentence, “Disclosure is the
less-restrictive alternative to more comprehensive speech regulations.”In other words, money may be used to
influence, but those who influence can and should be identified.

Michael J. Copps, former head of the Federal Communication
Commission is quick to support disclosure as an important and immediate answer
to Citizens United and, now, McCutcheon.And he reminds us and anyone else willing to
listen – the law is already there to do this.It just needs be enforced.

Section 317 of
the Federal Communications Act (47 USC § 317) requires identification of any
on-air commercial – political or otherwise.Any advertisement– even one with
Diane Rauner in a blue house dress promising she is a Democrat – must also
“fully and fairly disclose the true identity of the person or persons, or
corporation, or committee, association or other unincorporated group, or other
entity” paying for them.

Copps asserts, “If a special interest group calling itself
Citizens for Purple Mountain Majesty and Amber Waves of Grain is a front group
for a chemical company refusing to clean up a toxic dump or an energy company
looking to buy friendships on Capitol Hill, the law says we need to know
that.”

All that is necessary is the enforcement of a legal statute
already on the books.So, how does this
happen?Mr. Copps explains that such enforcement
could take place in 90 days or less if necessary.It just takes some push by people interested
in forcing the FCC to do something about it.And no time is better than right
now.

Recently Obama appointed venture capitalist Tom Wheeler,
whom Obama dubbed the “Bo Jackson” of the communication world as leader of the
FCC.Recent decisions indicate a leader
of the FCC interested in assisting internet providers with increasing
fees.Another appointee, Michael
O’Rielly is a former Republican Senate staffer.But Common Cause has been supportive in hoping these two new
commissioners will invigorate the Commission to do more than rubber stamp
communication industry transactions.Perhaps
we can assist in this?

Maybe you’d like to consider contacting the members of the
FCC to request they put some teeth back into a law that has remained silently
on the books.You can bet that the Koch
brothers and everyone else at Purple Mountain Majesty will provide a
not-so-gentle downpour of lawyers and arguments, but the Supreme Court has
already indicated the direction for disclosure as acceptable.Let’s get started now.

Email and phone your Senator or Representative now.Contact the current members of the FCC and
ask them to grow some fortitude and put the law 317 into effect before November
2014, and certainly before 2016.

Even as a very young reader, I knew something was dreadfully
wrong with Alice in Lewis Carroll’s book about falling through the looking
glass.

Chief among them was the lack of struggle Alice seemed to
have in drinking an unidentified liqueur or in snacking on a small morsel of
obviously tainted bread.In each case,
these offerings included invitations to imbibe or snack.

Quite honestly, as a kid I ate most everything I found –
even while hiking with other kids in landfills, but we knew better to ingest
anything marked “eat me.”And we’d have
smashed any bottle inscribed with “drink me.” Even in my dreams, I was
never so compliant.

Not so today.In
America, we swallow almost anything anyone gives us.Especially not-so-subtle electronic messages from cloaked
and shadowy characters who promote political candidates.And, like in Alice, we don’t know who they
are and - thanks to the Supreme Court - how much they’re giving to promote the
candidate.Let’s start enforcing Rule
317 in the FCC code of laws.Make the
call.

Sunday, April 20, 2014

Two Joint Resolutions are still alive in the House and the
Senate of the General Assembly despite the extremely short time and the seeming
difficulty to raise enough votes – especially in the House – to keep the
movement for a Fair Tax succeeding.In a
worst-case scenario, Speaker Madigan, the master of vote collection, will fall
short of collecting the necessary votes in the House and the Resolution may
disappear in another week and a half.

Senator Don Harmon

If that were sadly to happen, the discussion could re-appear
in 2016.And would.The appeal to a fair tax is worth a Joint
Resolution now, and the emphatic discussion presented by A Better Illinois and
sponsor Senator Don Harmon is as important economically as it will be twice as
important if it must be reborn in 2016.

By the way, in case you agree, you can contact your
Representative and Senator regarding HJRCA
49 or SJRCA40 NOW.

Of course “taxes” have become the overworked term of the
last few months.Governor Quinn, in his
budget speech of March, has called for the fiscal necessity of a continuation
of the “temporary” tax increase of 2011, and the Republicans have called
foul.Speaker Madigan, for reasons only
comprehensible to the Speaker, piled on with a declaration to consider a
millionaire tax, while providing a tax break for major businesses.Perhaps this was cover for the Governor’s
proposal, but only the Speaker would know.One of those ideas has been withdrawn, and the other – the business relief
tax cut – is part of the walking dead at this point.Would-be Governor Bruce Rauner has yet to
offer his promised budget (the pace of the 30 Committee Big Business group on
Illinois Economics he promised?), but he too has been strident in denouncing
the Governor’s appeal to maintain the current tax increase.

And, of course, lost in all of this was the most sensible
and most enduring fix possible for the State of Illinois: The Fair Tax.

I noted the other day that the latest epithet connected to
the radio ads for a fair tax is calling it a “Fair Tax Cut.”Nice idea for good reasons.

One of the most bloviated and blustering opponents of the
Fair Tax” has been Rep. David McSweeney of Barrington Hills.If the antiquated flat tax were an old,
rusting and misfiring car, McSweeney would drive that inefficient piece of metal
until , well, until forever.Forget inventive
ideas of safety or mileage.Anything new-fangled
like key start or radio.For Rep.
McSweeney innovation is the enemy.Fairness is Satan.

And, this brings us back to Senator Harmon’s example of how
a Fair Tax might actually work in Illinois.It is important to note that Harmon’s example is just that, not an
actual design that is in any way part of the proposal within the Joint Resolutions.In fact, if an Amendment were to be
acceptable to the voting public of Illinois, it would ultimately require a
specialized group of legislators from both houses to actually determine an
agreed-upon “Fair Tax” schedule.Senator
Harmon’s proposal is just that – a PROPOSAL.

More than one Luddite

Of course, once you roll out a new vehicle out in front of a
Luddite like Rep. McSweeney, he’ll have plenty of sudden-conjured reasons to go
berserk.And, of course, he
does…nonsensically.Following rule 1 –
10 in the ALEC playbook, McSweeney denounces the proposal as being “bad for
taxpayers because.”These vehement
protests, often delivered with the same scoffing and authoritative emptiness of
a Rush Limbaugh monologue, “It’s a tax increase, It’s a tax increase, It’s a tax increase, It’s a tax increase, It’s a tax
increase, etc.”

Not surprisingly, Senator Harmon’s plan actually demonstrates
that the “Fair Tax” will instead help by providing monetary relief to 94% of
Illinoisans, and many services due to be cut in 2016 might be saved. (click here to
learn about the proposal)

And for some of us, the plan may seem too moderate, but we
also need to remember it is a starting point, a proposal.In fact, the plan as proposed by the Senator
does not deliver on the many millions and even billions that were once provided
in comparable charts run by the CTBA (Chicago Tax & Budget Accountability)
on the desirous effects of a graduated tax for Illinois.Comparisons states like Iowa provided
billions more in potential tax revenue.

This unassertive proposal brings in about $23 million less
than a current flat tax rate.Why the
lesser amount?

Senator Harmon, when asked, explained his main reasons for
the modest proposal were at least two-fold.First, it quite simply demonstrated and provided the kind of help a
financially strapped citizen in Illinois could receive unless he was making well
over $200,000 annually (a bit more than even an extremely argumentative
opponent like McSweeney can use to call Middle Class).Likewise, a modest proposal was more “Revenue Neutral,” or it came closest to
what might be earned under a current flat tax structure, but it would still
demonstrate significantly the benefits to the greater percentage of Illinois
workers who would benefit from such a change.And, let’s not forget the greater amount of spending that would come
with such a windfall in the pockets of those who must spend (not invest) to
survive.We all would benefit.

Let’s not forget that a fair or graduated tax system also remains
more responsive to increased wages and growth over time. Just one more reasons we should be having this
conversation now, even if perhaps Speaker Madigan may want us to have it instead
in 2016.

Drives fine…why change it?

Regardless, the conversation is an important one, and even
if it is put on ice by the subterranean powers in the General Assembly who have
pre-determined what will and what will not be on this year’s schedule, it is
one we all should have with our elected legislators.

If they’re not thinking about it now, they’re going to need
to very soon.There’s only so much money
in Springfield – and only so much time.The old vehicle is dying.

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Breaking (4/17/14): This just in from Northern Illinois Jobs with Justice.

"Our
efforts and those of State Senator Linda Chapa LaVia have helped to
slow the reckless proliferation of charter schools in Illinois. Your
phone calls, emails, and witness slips helped enormously.

The bill to
dissolve the charter commission ( HB 3754 & SB 2627 ) not
only made it out of committee, but it passed the full House. And the
Charter School Accountability Act (HB 6005) passed
safely out of committee and is still alive in both houses. ( Please note:
it has a new bill number (SB 588 )in the Senate.)

Please call
your State Representative and your State Senator today and ask them to support
both those bills. There may be some negotiation about each of them.
Be sure to tell your State Senator to stand firm for local control in
charter school decisions. Tell all your lawmakers that any entity that
gets public funds must be accountable to the public. Click on this link to find contact information for
these lawmakers."

Note: Representative Linda Chapa LaVia and other legislators
have drafted more than one bill seeking changes in the operations of charter
schools and the Illinois Charter School Commission.John Laesch, activist for Northern Illinois Jobs
with Justice, has outlined his own position below regarding these efforts.John would urge all of us to take an active
part by calling our legislators to validate these bills and others.

Mr. Laesch’s letter:

After the
UNO Charter School scandal and most recently, pay-to-play schemes connected to
Rahm Emanuel and two Concept charter schools, I am blown away that the Chicago
Tribune is still editorializing in favor of publicly funded private charter
schools that overpay their CEO’s and underperform academically.

The
charter school commission is far from “independent.” In fact, the law
that created the charter school commission stipulates that all nine members of
the commission will be charter school advocates. Secondly, the commission
that has been around for less than two years is sucking 2.75% in fees out of
charter school classrooms as a means of maintaining their staff, and they have
found their way into an early conflict of interest (I’m being polite and not
calling it a scandal yet).

This
“independent” commission has voted on three charter school appeals and approved
two of those three. It should come as no surprise that the two Concept
schools that were approved by the commission were connected to one of the
“independent” commissioners, Glen Barton. Barton was one of the nine
commissioners who voted to approve Concept’s appeal, and he is also the board
president for the Peoria Concept Charter School. Since this conflict of
interest was discovered by a Chicago Sun Times investigative reporter, Glen
Barton has since resigned from the commission – shocking, I know.

And even
if there was no conflict of interest/scandal, voters should still be asking
Springfield lawmakers why there should be a super-power “independent”
commission that can override the will of their elected school board. Why
do we need that? When did it become OK to do away with democracy and
simply appoint supreme, “independent” commissions over them? The entire
idea of the charter commission was created by the Illinois Commission Chairman,
Greg Richmond, who states clearly in his point paper to ALEC that the purpose
of the commission is to override the decisions of local school boards. He
calls elected school boards “road blocks.” Imagine that: elected school
board members protecting the taxpayers from school privatizers like Richmond,
Andrew Broy and Ron Packard.

Moving
beyond the commission, I think it is important to talk about some of the
regulatory reforms being discussed in Springfield that address some of the
“secret sauce” issues surrounding these taxpayer funded, privately run charter
schools.

The data
continues to show, and credible news agencies continue to report that charter
schools are underperforming or performing at the same level as their
neighborhood public school counterparts. The only school that seems to
perform any better is Noble Street, a privately run charter school that
administers excessive fines and bullies kids who don’t seem to be cutting the
mustard (that is, the underperforming students). It is a selective
retention process used by Noble Street to make a student’s life a living hell
if he fails a test or two. Eventually the kid is begging his parents to get
him out of the charter, or Noble eventually expels the kid. Either way,
Noble keeps the kids who pass tests, and the rest end up back in the public
school. One important law being discussed in Springfield requires the
receiving public school to document why the child left the private charter
school. Another proposed law requires the taxpayers’ money to “follow the
child” when the child returns to the public school.

While the
Tribune and most of the charter school privatizers continue to advocate for
“innovation,” they never really expand beyond that one word. I have
learned that charter school advocates are not talking about innovative teaching
techniques.; rather, they are talking about innovative management strategies
like selective retention or salary structures that allow the CEO of each
charter to make $250,000 per year (common in Chicago) or $5 million per year
like Ron Packard (K12 Inc.). It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to do the
math and figure out that this money is being siphoned from the classroom.
Rupert Murdoch recently described the education “emerging market” by saying,
“when it comes to K through 12 education, we see a $500 billion sector in the
US alone.” For this one line sentence alone, I strongly support another
law being pushed in Springfield that seeks to curb the profiteering and CEO
extortion by making sure that at least 80% of the taxpayers’ money is spent in
the classroom.

Furthermore,
research of Illinois charter schools shows that charters are excluding children
with disabilities (IEP’s) and English language learners (ELL). This is
another form of selective retention or “innovation” that is designed to reduce
charter business costs and academic challenges like language barriers.
Another proposed law in Springfield aims to correct this inequality by
requiring charter schools to accept equal numbers of IEP and ELL students.

And yes,
to go back to the issue of democracy, another very important bill seeks to get
rid of the super-power charter commission that exists to override elected
school boards, invites scandal, and answers to nobody.

Finally, let
me make my final point with a question. Why are Springfield lawmakers and
editorial papers like the Chicago Tribune not advocating for an elected school
board in Chicago? Quit trying to stick the rest of the state with this
undemocratic garbage that doesn’t seem to be working very well in your own
city.

About Me

I am a retiree, political activist, social advocate and community volunteer. I taught at Lyons Township High School in LaGrange for 34 years in the Language Arts classroom and worked as an administrator for several years. My current avocations include various community outreach and assistance programs. Having benefitted from employment in a collegial, reflective teaching environment that encouraged dedication and professionalism, I continue to seek the promotion of education at all levels as a long-term effort combining talent, perseverance, commitment, and constant professional growth - not a blind adherence to a business model of measured production.

Copyrights & Fair Use

This blog contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material available in my efforts to advance understanding of issues vital to a democracy. I believe this constitutes a “fair use” of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law.